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Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, and Frans Timmermans, first vice-president of the Commission, ruffled feathers at the European Parliament in Strasbourg today (16 December) when they presented a slimmed-down 2015 work programme that will scrap a number of pending proposals.

The programme lists 80 pieces of pending legislation to be withdrawn in 2015, and only 23 new initiatives. It is a sharp departure from previous practice. In the past five years, the Commission under José Manuel Barroso has proposed an average of 130 new initiatives in each annual work programme, and proposed to withdraw an average of 30.

“We are breaking with the practice of listing everything for fear of being incomplete,” Timmermans, who is in charge of ‘better regulation’, told MEPs. “Just because an issue is important doesn’t mean that the EU has to act on it.”

He stressed that the Commission did not include anything in the work programme that it did not think could be done in the next year. “Better regulation does not mean no regulation or deregulation,” he insisted.

However, MEPs reacted angrily to the agenda’s long ‘kill list’ – particularly to the withdrawal of two environmental proposals that had already started the legislative process – new limits on air pollution and new European Union rules on waste (the so-called “circular economy package”). MEPs and eleven member states had written to Juncker and Timmermans last month asking them not to scrap the proposals.

A draft of the work programme was leaked last week that confirmed the proposals would be withdrawn. The draft stated that a new version of the air package would be put forward next year, “modified as part of the legislative follow-up to the 2030 energy and climate package”. Although the draft cited “no foreseeable agreement” between member states and MEPs as the reason for withdrawing the waste package, this has since been changed to a new explanation which promises to put forward a “new, more ambitious proposal by the end of 2015 to promote circular economy”.

“We are not compromising on the goals we want to attain, we are looking critically at the methods we want to use,” Timmermans explained to the Parliament. He has maintained that the college of commissioners has the right to withdraw work started by its predecessors under the principle of ‘political discontinuity’.

However, MEPs were sceptical about why these proposals needed to be removed, just to be proposed again. Giovanni La Via, the centre-right chair of the Parliament’s environment committee, said he was “deeply disappointed” by the withdrawals. “We’ve heard your new proposal which was trailed in the agencies as being an improvement,” he told Timmermans. “But I think it would be a good idea for you to explain how it’s better.”

Dutch Liberal MEP Sophie in’t Veld said the Commission was in danger of deregulation for deregulation’s sake. “I believe in smart trimming, not taking a blunt ax to the base of the tree,” she said. “The Commission should not throw the baby out with the bath water by arbitrarily scrapping laws.” She also objected to the fact that the Commission is withdrawing proposals because there is no agreement foreseen within the Council.

British Green MEP Jill Evans said “we will take as a promise that you will bring forward more ambitious proposals and we will wait for those with interest”. British Liberal MEP Catherine Bearder said: “The Commission has backed down from scrapping environmental proposals entirely, but we must now prevent them from being watered down.”

Many of the 80 pieces of legislation listed for withdrawal are for reasons of obsolescence or redundancy, and their withdrawal was previewed by the ‘refit’ report issued earlier this year by José Manuel Barroso, the former president of the Commission. But 18 are being withdrawn because the Commission has deemed that no agreement is possible between member states themselves, or between member states and MEPs. These include a directive on the tax of motor vehicles moved to another state, a decision on the financing of nuclear power stations, a directive on rates of excise duty on alcohol and a directive on medicinal prices.

A proposed fund for compensation of oil pollution damage in European waters is listed for withdrawal because “the impact assessment and relevant analysis are now out of date”.

A proposed directive on taxation of energy products and electricity is listed for withdrawal because “Council negotiations have resulted in a draft compromise text that has fully denatured the substance of the Commission proposal”. Timmermans indicated last month that Juncker’s Commission will be more aggressive about vetoing proposals if it thinks they have changed substantially during the legislative process.

Proposed new rules on the labelling of organic products will be withdrawn unless there is an agreement between MEPs and member states within six months. A directive on maternity leave will also be withdrawn if there is no agreement within six months, though the Commission says it would replace it with a revised initiative in this case.

New proposals for 2015

The draft identifies ten areas of focus for 2015:

A new boost for jobs, growth and investment

A connected digital single market

A resilient energy union with a forward-looking climate change policy

A deeper and fairer internal market with a strengthened industrial base

A deeper and fairer economic and monetary union

A reasonable and balanced free trade agreement with the United States

An area of justice and fundamental rights based on mutual trust

Working towards a new policy on migration

A stronger global actor

A union of democratic change

There are 23 initiatives planned for 2015 under these headings. These include Juncker’s investment plan, a digital single market package, an energy union communication, a labour mobility package, a capital markets action plan, and a communication on a “renewed approach for corporate taxation in the single market in the light of global developments”.

The Commission is also planning to put forward an agenda on migration and a review of the EU’s decision-making process on genetically-modified crops.